Child cost (Part 1): Maternity leave

When we discussed the cost of children in class last week, I realized that the US maternity leave, as provided by law, is unpaid. 

I was a bit surprised by the fact that maternity leave is unpaid in the US. The system of maternity leave in Switzerland is paid. But in my opinion, it’s not enough, and I would advocate a parental leave, as I will explain in my next blog. 

First of all, paid maternity leave is not only Swiss, but exists in all European countries. Even though Switzerland is not part of the EU, there are some bilateral agreements between the EU and Switzerland, and all Swiss legislation is euro-compatible. So, the law of Switzerland fits the requirements of the EU. 

I don’t consider Switzerland to be a progressive country in the matter of feminism. The federal voting right (which is the voting right on a federal level) was accorded to women in 1971. The last state (Appenzell Rhodes-Intérieures/Appenzell Innerrhoden) to give the right to vote to women for the state level did so only in 1990. In fact, the population of that state, through its vote, denied women the right to vote, but the federal court decided it was contrary to the Swiss constitutional. Even if the government was composed of a majority of women in 2010, as one of the previous posts showed, women are still underrepresented in high responsibility jobs. A gap still exists between men’s salaries and women’s salaries, everything else being equal, and “typically feminine” jobs are still devaluated, etc. Moreover,  it took sixty years to adopt a law providing maternity leave. Indeed, the Swiss constitutional provision establishing maternity insurance was decided in 1945. Subsequent laws, however, proposed different ways to implement this insurance, and were rejected several times by voters through the direct democracy system (so-called referendum). Finally, voters, on July 1st 2005, that is to say sixty years later, adopted the law implementing this right to paid maternity leave. 

To explain the system, a little digression about men and military service is necessary. In Switzerland, military service is (still) mandatory for men. In order to compensate for their temporary inability to work at their workplace, the state created a “loss of income insurance” for them in the 1950s. What was finally adopted in 2005 was simply to extend this compensation to maternity. Since then, women have the right to a maternity leave of 14 weeks after the birth of a child. They receive 80 % of their salary, which is paid by the so-called “loss of income insurance.” However, the amount of money available per day is subject to a maximum. This means that women, in case of pregnancy, or men, in case of military service, who receive a high income, will not get 80 % percent of their salary. Employers, however, remain free to compensate the 20% of the remaining salary, or to pay the usual amount of salary in the case of high-income earners. 

From my point of view, maternity leave is a great step in the achievement of more equality in the society. The cost of childcare is, at least in part, shared by the society, because the mother would still be paid when she is prevented to work by her pregnancy. 

As stated in many of our class discussions and in many readings, the public sphere was organized by men, for men. Maternity leave is one means to adapt this public sphere to the needs of (a great number of) women. For sure, not all women want children; neither all men want to participate to the public sphere. But not having children doesn’t mean that we don’t have to participate in building a better society. Would it be fair if everybody’s taxes were not used for school? To the debate about wether children are a public good or not, I would say they are. 

As a constraint which has weighed on a lot of women, and moreover on single-mothers, the loss of income resulting from pregnancy should be taken into account. I really think maternity leave is a wonderful improvement, but it’s not enough. A parental leave would be a better solution, and that will be the topic of my next post.

Sexism's toll on women's mental health

In 2013, TIME magazine published an article entitled "It's Not Just Sexism, Women Do Suffer More From Mental Illness." The article explained how mental health professionals tend to downplay the gendered difference in rates of mental illness for fear of being called sexist (hence, the title of the article). The article further stated that rates of mental illness among women are 20-40% higher than among men in any given year. Indeed, women are 70% more likely to experience depression and are twice as likely to suffer from an anxiety disorder. The TIME article acknowledged that some possible explanations for the differences in rates of mental illness between men and women might be the fact that women experience greater obstacles to career advancement, are pressured to balance multiple roles, and consistently fall short of an unattainable standard of beauty force-fed them by the media.

Interestingly, a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Georgia State University found that behaviors such as cat-calling, sexual objectification, and sexual harassment have a direct connection to mental illness among women. The study supports the notion that women who are exposed to such harassment tend to live in a state of hyper-vigilance, which forces women to constrain their behaviors and leads to increased levels of anxiety and psychological distress.

Another recent study found that women in positions of authority are more likely to show symptoms of depression than their male counterparts and women "down the ladder." The study's co-author explained that, theoretically, women with high-paying jobs and successful careers should enjoy better mental health. Instead, their authority comes with a psychological cost:

Male leadership is considered legitimate and expected...[b]ut when women are leaders, they face resistance and are exposed to overt and subtle gender discrimination and harassment...When women in authority are assertive, dominant, powerful and confident, they're viewed as unfeminine...Men don't have this conflict; these are "masculine" traits.

This notion is supported by yet another recent study by a professor at Northeastern University who, using data from RateMyProfessors.com, found that students tended to perceive their female professors as "bossy," "fiesty," and "abrasive," but were more likely to call their male professors "geniuses" and describe them as "knowledgeable."

These studies provide further evidence that our notions of what constitutes "femininity" and "masculinity" must change, and that our culture must stop objectifying and harassing women. Until we dismantle gendered stereotypes, women achieving career success will be forced to carve their own space in a man's world, will be criticized for appropriating "masculine" characteristics, and will experience psychological distress as a result. How very unfortunate that even for the women privileged enough to achieve positions of authority, gender inequality continues to punish them once they get to the top by adversely impacting their mental health (to say nothing of lower-income women, whose experiences of psychological distress likely far outstrip those of their upper-class counterparts). For more on how gender stereotypes harm women in positions of power, read this blog post.

Silicon Valley: The postgender meritocratic paradise that isn't

Silicon Valley once represented an exciting opportunity for freethinkers and entrepreneurs to break down the old gender and racial barriers that appeared immovable in traditional business and finance. Up until the 1960’s, the field of computer programming had been predominately female. In fact, the earliest “computers” were not machines at all, but rather women whose research and calculations were indispensable to many of the most significant scientific discoveries of the eighteenth century. Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord and Lady Byron, holds the distinction of being the world’s first computer programmer, and her writings influenced the creation of the first electronic computer decades later.

However, if anything, the tech boom has created new gender gaps. Today, men have largely appropriated the modern tech industry and, to that extent, the future.  Last December, New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor traced the careers of the men and women of the 1994 Stanford class. Stanford University is generally considered to be the most powerful and influential Silicon Valley incubator, and the class of 1994 graduated at the birth of the Internet age.

Interviewee Gina Bianchini, former-CEO of Ning (an online social network platform), spoke to Kantor about how her generation perceived the Internet as “the great equalizer.” Nevertheless, as Kamy Wicoff, another Stanford alum and founder of www.shewrites.com, notes:

We were sitting on an oil boom, and the fact is that the women played a support role instead of walking away with billion-dollar businesses.

The lack of diversity in Silicon Valley isn’t limited to its upper echelon, or even to just its technical positions. In June 2014, Facebook disclosed the ethnic and gender makeup of its employees: Women occupy only 15 percent of Facebook’s technical positions, 23 percent of senior management, and 47 percent of the non-technical positions. Similarly, only 6 percent of Facebook’s technical employees, and 13 percent of their non-technical employees, are both non-white and non-Asian. These numbers are generally consistent with similar disclosures by Yahoo!, Google, and LinkedIn.

So what happened? One factor may be that the self-perpetuating association between modern technology and the male “nerd” has given rise to discrimination. UC Hastings released a report in January 2015 that found that 100 percent of women of color in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) have experienced gender bias. Details about the report were summarized on the blog last week.

Men were – and continue to be – hired over women, and whites over non-whites, in the amorphous name of “culture fit.” Often, these hiring biases were simply shrugged off. In 2012, a co-founder and former-CTO of PayPal provided some insight into this mentality to the 2012 Stanford Startup class. He said:

The truth is that PayPal had trouble hiring women because PayPal was just a bunch of nerds! They never talked to women. So how were they supposed to interact with and hire them?

Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent National Student Clearinghouse report reveals that the proportion of women pursuing degrees in STEM fields has actually declined in the past ten years (Discussed recently here). And this is despite the increased lip service paid to encouraging young women into STEM fields, as well as the uptick in women studying biology or medicine. Whereas women received 23 percent of computer science bachelor’s degrees in 2004, they received only 18 percent in 2014. In addition, women with STEM jobs are dropping out earlier in their careers, despite earning 33 percent more than women in non-STEM jobs, and “enjoying” a smaller income gap relative to their male colleagues. This is attributed to the pressures of traditional gender roles and stigmas, as was as the lack of adequate family initiatives in many Silicon Valley companies. They perceive an opportunity to gain a place in their company’s leadership, but don’t want to sacrifice everything to get it.

So what can we do about this? Following Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s demoralizing “good karma”-comments at the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration, Salon.com’s Sarah Gray noted that:

A lot of advice is thrown at women to be considered equals in the workplace — lean in, speak up, be confident, demand raises and promotions, don’t dress “slutty” — which in itself is problematic because it places the onus on women to correct the culturally entrenched male dominance in workplaces.

It’s clear that more needs to be done on the part of tech companies to bridge the gender gap in Silicon Valley. But -- without letting institutions off the hook -- it is also clear that companies often need to be compelled to make significant changes to their organizational cultures. With the declining number of women studying STEM fields, and the “exodus” of female thirty-somethings from STEM careers, it’s uncertain where this pressure is going to come from in the future.

Increasingly, exasperated female entrepreneurs and startup-founders in Silicon Valley have turned to women-only venture funds, or have started so-called “gender-gated funds.” This type of self-segregation has helped many women raise seed money outside of the older capital venture fund community, but has done less to facilitate larger, structural changes in the industry that challenge institutionalized discrimination.

Why women continue to be underrepresented in STEM

Getting more women in America to pursue an education and career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) remains challenging, despite years of various efforts aimed at boosting the number of women in these fields. With the White House pointing out that women earn 33 percent more in STEM than in non-STEM positions, and have a smaller wage gap relative to men in STEM jobs, one would expect a recruitment and retention problem to be nonexistent. Why are women still balking at becoming scientists and engineers?

On the "Women in STEM" page of the Office of Science and Technology Policy's website, a quote by President Obama floats above a photo of molecular biologist Lydia Villa-Komaroff. The quote states:

One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.

But, wait. Another quote adjacent to Villa-Komaroff's photo mentions the prejudice and discouragement she overcame. Which is the main issue: lack of interest or gender discrimination? More importantly, why have years of initiatives and campaigns failed to ameliorate the problem?

One possible reason, apart from two possiblities already mentioned, and thus unaffected by established initiatives, is that social conditioning to be perfect makes women abandon STEM courses in college. Women tend to leave tougher-graded, lucrative majors when they receive bad grades, while men do not. Also, many men seem to think women get discouraged too easily upon entering the workforce. However, their advice to women often reinforces gender roles and stereotypes, belittles women's technical skills, and ignores reports of sexism.

Motivational news articles like this one seek to counter discouragement and lack of interest below the college level, pushing young women to follow through. However, interviewers often gloss over the "prove yourself" trials and teasing by male classmates. Women are often vulnerable to discouragement precisely because of implicit biases. Certain STEM fields are associated with natural brilliance, which is erroneously thought to be a trait women cannot possess. Many people are socialized to believe that women succeed based on hard work, and that men often succeed based on an additional in-born intellectual talent. It becomes clear that perceived lack of interest and discouragement are often the product of society's refusal to reject outdated, sexist beliefs. An earlier post on this blog shares that perspective as well.

Beyond any self-discouragement steering women away from STEM programs or jobs, reports of sexism show that aggressive discrimination exists in these fields. No television ad campaign, college career counseling, or increase in salary can persuade one to stay in such a toxic culture. A recent survey of 557 female STEM researchers revealed that 93% of the white respondents experienced gender bias. Unsurprisingly, it was worse for women of color, with the entire 100% saying they reported experiencing it. Furthermore, racial stereotyping seems to be prevalent. Latinas are regularly mistaken for janitors and called "crazy." Black women are expected to be assertive, but not "angry." Asian women get push-back if they do not act traditionally feminine. Finally, one-third of the surveyed women had perceived being sexually harassed at work.

When many men have difficulty believing gender bias exists in STEM, and racial stereotypes seem slow to die, initiatives such as the White House's will not meet their goals. Thrusting the burden onto women, yet again, to overcome all obstacles with tenacity is a myopic and losing strategy. 

Femvertising: feminism as a marketing tool

To gain an edge on competitors, companies feel pressure to stand for something more than the product they are selling. In the past decade, companies have started “femvertising,” seeking to speak to women and feminists through their advertisements. This trend makes sense considering that women account for 85% of purchasing in the United States.

Dove was one of the earliest companies to join the femvertising movement, with its real beauty campaign in 2004. The campaign seeks to widen the definition of beauty beyond the unattainable definition generally put forward in the media. I remember when I first saw these Dove commercials as a 14-year-old, I thought “wow, this is different.” Since then, the company has launched subsequent campaigns aimed at rethinking portrayals of beauty in advertisements.

Observed alone, these ads seem to step in the right direction, celebrating beauty of all forms rather than only the stereotypical portrayals otherwise found in the media. However, the company that owns Dove, Unilever, also owns Axe—the company that sells toiletry products to men, primarily using the hypersexuality of women as a means of selling its products.

Axe commercials generally show scantily clad women with stereotypical “perfect” bodies fawning over men who use Axe shower gel. Some commercials end with the slogan “The cleaner you are. The dirtier you get.” The different messages the Dove and Axe commercials send is a harsh reminder that companies are in the business of selling products, and they do so by capitalizing on trends that interest buyers.

When questioned regarding the hypocrisy between the advertisements for the two products, a spokeswoman for Dove said that each brand “is tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its audience." Essentially then, Dove markets female empowerment to women because only women are interested in empowering women. Axe is not marketing female empowerment to teenage boys and men, because the company believes they are not interested in it. Although the idea behind the real beauty campaign is a good one, perpetuating the stereotype that men are not interested in the empowerment of women—or giving up on getting them interested in it—seems to run counter to the intent of the feminist movement.

Should we be asking more from companies that promote feminism in their advertising? I believe we should. By running the real beauty campaign and simultaneously airing Axe commercials, Unilever turns the ideas of feminism and female empowerment into mere commodities, just as it turns the hypersexualization of women into a commodity. Instead of merely putting forward ideas for the sake of selling a product, companies that promote female empowerment in their advertisements should practice what they preach.

Ultimately, an increase in femvertising is a welcome and positive change. If nothing more, it can show girls that traditional female stereotypes are bogus and that it's okay to be a career driven woman or to have hips. And, studies show that women are responding to these advertisements. In a survey this year by SheKnows, 52% of women said they have purchased a product because they liked the way that the company portrayed strong women in its advertisements.

While I celebrate the increase in female empowerment in advertising, further changes are necessary in advertising and more broadly, all media. I hope for a day when advertisements featuring strong females becomes commonplace, when it is no longer noteworthy that such commercials exist. Not only advertisements directed at women, but directed at everyone—including men.

Is the freezer really women’s liberator? Part I: The hype: The freezer can keep our dreams alive. Right?

I was excited when my phone rang. My college friend Michelle always cheers me up. In my mind, this woman is living a life worthy of envy. She landed her dream job as an investment banker at one of the world’s most prestigious firms. She owns an impeccably decorated condo in New York, a closet full of designer clothes, shoes and handbags, drives a fancy German sports car, and takes regular vacations to exotic locations. She’s an amazing cook, runs marathons, volunteers for two different charities, and has a very active social life. She is brilliant, ambitious, vibrant, gregarious, and incredibly kind. She is the type of human being that I would want my own daughter to emulate. My hypothetical daughter, that is. And that brings me to the subject of Michelle’s call:

Michelle: Should I go to an egg-freezing party?
Heather: Michelle! You can’t be serious?
Michelle: My good friend Veronica just froze her eggs and she said it wasn’t that bad. I have been so focused on my career that I let my biological clock expire. I am 35 and single; I am running out of options! You must be thinking about this too?

She’s right. I think about it a lot. I’m not obsessive, yet, but it is a major concern. Women’s fertility window is limited. We are born with all the eggs we’ll ever have. We are most fertile in our early-to- mid- twenties, then our chances of getting pregnant drop dramatically in our early thirties, and by the time we reach forty our fertility rate is just 3%.

So, Michelle’s story is all too common. It’s a story I share. As we all have tried to take advantage of the opportunities to attend college and have a career that our grandparents, and maybe even our own parents, didn’t have, we are encountering a problem. As we work hard to make a name for ourselves in the workplace, our biological clocks are not waiting for us. Thus, an advancement in science like egg freezing is big news.

Egg freezing has been widely covered in the media. In March 2013 Glamour magazine ran a story  titled “Now That Everyone’s Freezing Their Eggs…Should You? The author described how with celebrities like Kim Kardashian undergoing egg-freezing, she decided it was time to get on board. Similarly, in June 2013 Cosmopolitan headlined an article asking “Freezing Your Eggs—Is This What We’re all doing Now?” The piece was written by Sarah Elizabeth Richards, an outspoken advocate for egg freezing whose op-eds urging women to freeze their eggs have run in the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Richards has detailed how between the ages of 36-38 she spent $50,000 of her savings to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they will help her have a family once she is ready. 

An entire industry has arisen around the practice. EggBanxx formed in February 2014, claiming to be “the first national network of doctors who offer egg freezing for fertility preservation and makes egg freezing affordable with easy, convenient financing.” Eggbaxx is the company that is hosting the egg-freezing cocktail party by friend Michelle was invited to. EggBanxx has been featured in Time, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, and even the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Another popular website, Eggsurance, was founded by Brigitte Adams after she attempted to freeze her eggs at age 38 and was frustrated about the lack of information. Eggsurance claims to offer “no nonsense egg freezing information and community in one place” and it too has received its fair share of press attention.

By and large the narrative about egg freezing has been similar and positive: freeze your eggs in order to extend your biological clock, give yourself peace of mind, and free your career. Sarah Richards called egg freezing “the best investment [she] ever made.” I have to admit, egg freezing could be a game changer. As Richards put it,

Amid all the talk about women ‘leaning in’ and ‘having it all,’ the conversation has left out perhaps the most powerful gender equalizer of all—the ability to control when we have children.

For all our discussion about gender equality in the workplace, the reality is that women’s fertility declines with age and thus women have to consider child-bearing during their peak career building years. Thus, on the one hand, allowing women to freeze their biological clock could lead to real gender equality in the workplace by allowing women to focus solely on their career building in their twenties and thirties, with eggs in the freezer for when their career is established, their income is sufficient, and they have found a mate. On the other hand, egg freezing encourages women to put their careers above childbearing when the science doesn’t support that there will be a high likelihood of success with such a process. 

The truth is that egg freezing technology is relatively new and is not endorsed for women who wish to delay their fertility for social or career reasons because the long terms effects and success are unknown. In Part II of this series I will explore the science, cost and statistics behind egg freezing to help us understand whether egg freezing is really the great equalizer it appears to be. As I told my friend Michelle, I see the allure, and I completely understand why a single woman in her mid-thirties might consider it, but the jury is still out on whether it’s safe and effective in the long run.